re: #292 HappyWarrior

That’s Eisenhower’s best domestic legacy imo.

In (I think) 1919, then-Lieutenant Eisenhower was assigned to a particular military exercise that would have a lot of repercussions for the future: it was a multi-vehicle Army convoy that undertook to drive from (I think) Maryland to Oakland over the existing road network. It took them something like forty days, over a road system that was scarcely improved since the Wild West days. Supposedly, Ike’s experience led him, as President, to use the excuse of military utility (I think the term “Defense” is still part of the formal designation of the Interstate Highway System) to push for Federal financing of a modern highway network nationwide. Wherever traffic and needy Congressional Districts mandated….